


Vulture

by wheel_pen



Series: Lucy [5]
Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-22
Updated: 2013-04-22
Packaged: 2017-12-09 06:02:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/770817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lex thinks too much, especially about Lucy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vulture

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Lucy, my original character, is Clark’s cousin on the Kent side. Although human she may have some strange psychic powers and definitely has some issues in her past. She’s having a tough time with her mom and goes to live with Jonathan and Martha for a while. She and Lex form a relationship.
> 
> 2\. In my world, Lex eventually becomes President. And his staff is from The West Wing. 
> 
> 3\. I started writing this series during the third season of Smallville, so it diverges from canon then or earlier.
> 
> 4\. Underage warning: This story may contain human or human-like teenagers, in high school, in sexual situations.
> 
> 5\. The bad words are censored. That’s just how I do things.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this AU. I own nothing and appreciate the chance to play in this universe.

She was lying on the couch, asleep. Green denim jumper, long-sleeved white t-shirt even though it was warm out, bare feet. It was after nine o’clock, and he was going to catch h—l for bringing her home so late. He wondered why her aunt and uncle hadn’t called already to chew him out and forbid her to ever see him again.

Why did everything that surrounded her have to be so f‑‑‑‑‑g complicated? She was too young for him. She had records—not just juvenile police records, he had those too, but psychiatric records. She’d tried to kill herself--twice, maybe three times. Her own mother wanted to use her to squeeze money out of him. Her aunt and uncle hated him, would love to keep her from him entirely.

And the funny thing was, there wasn’t really anything to keep her _from_ , because they weren’t fu—lovers, they’d never even kissed. Maybe some of their conversations weren’t entirely innocent, but nothing had ever come of it. Bad choice of words. Nothing had ever happened because of it. He wasn’t teaching her to drink and smoke and swear and do drugs. Maybe speeding down country roads at 180 miles per hour and then bribing the cop who spotted them wasn’t exactly church picnic behavior, but he was certain it was a h—l of a lot better than what most people suspected.

If he was going to go through this much stress and trouble over her, they might as well be f‑‑‑‑‑g.

So why was he doing it? He rested his hands on the back of the couch, leaning over her. It wasn’t a natural position. It was predatory. It was like a vulture bending over the carrion it was about to rip into pieces, studying it first to look for the most tender parts. He felt like that anyway.

He had yelled at her. That’s what it was about. No, it wasn’t just that he yelled. In fact, he hadn’t really yelled that much. He had put up the walls. He had been talking to his father, and his father had once again told him that he was a disappointment and unworthy of being his heir and that he’d made the wrong decision on _this_ deal and his father would have gone another way on _that_ proposal and—sometimes he thought the only way the old man would gain any respect for him would be if Lex successfully assassinated him and took over the company. “Good job, son,” Lex could hear his father’s ghostly figure saying, “exactly what _I_ would have done in your position. Oh, by the way, I donated all the company’s available funds to some charity or other. Memo’s in the drawer—already sent a copy to the lawyers and the press. I’ll see you in Hell someday, son. But you probably won’t rate reserved parking like I do.”

And then she had come in, and she knew he was—angry, because she always knew, because she knew him too well, and all she wanted to do was make him feel better. She couldn’t make his father not f—k with him, she couldn’t make her uncle stop giving him the suspicious eye, she couldn’t make the townspeople stop whispering his name as a curse whenever one of their own developed some freakish, destructive ability _undoubtedly_ caused by experimental fertilizer contamination—but she _could_ make him feel like there was someone in the world who cared about him, not because they were paid to act like they cared but because they saw something in him that they wanted to… protect and take care of.  Her cousin made him feel that way too, sometimes, but Clark actually had a life, not to mention secrets he couldn’t share with Lex. Lucy didn’t really like other people that much, and Lex knew her secrets. And she knew his.

She knew how much his father upset him, how he really and truly hated the old b‑‑‑‑‑d but yet could never exactly make himself get rid of him once and for all… either by killing him or just skipping the country with his money. Despite the mockery he made of it, the word “father” still had some sort of hold over him, and much as he hated that hold he couldn’t change it. Lex could never let anyone know that, especially his father. But Lucy knew, somehow. She knew that his father could make him vulnerable, even if only for a brief time. And Lex hated to be vulnerable. Especially in front of anyone else.

Maybe today she had come in a heartbeat too soon after he’d hung up the phone, or too hard on the heels of a particularly pathetic thought he’d had. Maybe his father’s words had dug deeper today than usual. Whatever it was, when she came in, when she saw he was upset and tried to help him, he put up the walls. The walls were there almost all the time, for almost everyone in his life, but she knew the secret ways around them, over them, and she never used that knowledge to hurt him. So he let her in, a little more each time. Except today, instead of lowering the drawbridge for her—and this metaphor was really getting ridiculous—he’d piled on more layers of stone and covered the walls in ice. And then studded them with spikes. Spikes that spit acid.

What he said didn’t matter. He didn’t say anything especially cutting and terrible, just the usual get out, go away, who do you think you are anyway? What he did didn’t matter. He didn’t try to physically hurt her, didn’t carry her out the door and dump her on the lawn, then lock the entrance behind him. He just gave her a cold look, the one that said closed for business, thanks for stopping by, and stopped speaking to her. Childish, really, but it got the point across.

And the look—on her face—hurt _so d—n much_ , more than anything his father could possibly ever say to him in his entire life. It hurt in the way that made him want to pull within those walls and never come out again, because if he had just stayed behind them in the first place he would never have felt that kind of pain.

Like a vulture he leaned over her, watching her sleep, like the vulture whose job it was to rip out the liver of Prometheus every day, knowing that the liver would grow back each time.

Only Prometheus was chained to a mountain. He couldn’t get away. Lucy came to him on her own, all the time, despite the people who told her she shouldn’t. And that group sometimes included him. She got her heart ripped out—not every day, but often—and she always came back. Her heart grew back and she returned to let him rip it out again. She didn’t leave when he gave her that cold look from the top of his wall, she laid down on the couch and did her homework, and then she fell asleep. Her told her to leave but she didn’t. So he ignored her, even though he couldn’t possibly concentrate on anything with the tension in the air suffocating him.

He pictured her lying not on the couch, asleep, but on the ground, at the foot of the walls, acid burning her skin, blood dripping from punctures and scratches, frostbite blistering her hands. Her heart resting in his hand, trailing veins and arteries, being crushed to ashes by his grip.

Her eyes opened. Emerald green, jade green, malachite green. Field of grass green. She wasn’t dead, her heart was regrowing, the burns and cuts and blisters were healing. But just because they could heal didn’t make them any less painful to receive.

“Hey.”

“Hi.”

She reached up and touched his cheek, and he knew she was seeing straight into whatever morbid imagery he’d conjured up, born of too many mythology classes and comic books and too much time alone to think. He wanted to keep it from her. But he also knew he couldn’t. She had to see, to know where his mind went, what it came up with, the dark alleyways it trailed through. He couldn’t _not_ show her. And if she ran because of it—she would be better off.

“I wouldn’t be better off.” He stared down at her, the vulture circling his prey. The vulture who didn’t want his prey but couldn’t help himself. “I wouldn’t be better off without you.”

She sat up, knelt on the couch, put her arms around him, rested her head against his lavender silk shirt. And he felt like there was someone in the world who cared about him, not because she was paid to act like she cared but because she saw something in him that she wanted to protect and take care of. What, he didn’t know. But something. His arms came up around her shoulders and held her there.

“It’s late. I have to take you home.”

“I can stay longer.”

“You already stayed longer than I thought you would.” He wished he hadn’t said that out loud. Then he decided he didn’t care.

The phone rang. “Who is it?” he whispered into her hair. She could tell sometimes.

“My uncle.”

He loosened his hold on her. “I’ll take you home. You’ll be there before he hangs up.”

She sighed. “Okay.”

But she would be back.


End file.
